


Kage-Tenshi

by DameOfNoDelicacy



Category: Bleach
Genre: Bleach Post-Chapter 685 - The End of Perfection, Canon Compliant, F/M, I'm sorry :/, M/M, Sad, Spoilers, but with some extrapolation/expansion, i am also not okay tbh, in memoriam, nanao is also not okay, shunsui is not okay, there is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 19:59:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11698884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameOfNoDelicacy/pseuds/DameOfNoDelicacy
Summary: “…I made your grave in shadow,” Shunsui says. “Selfish? Heh. Well, maybe. But I have yet to hear you complain about it, so…”***In commemoration of Bleach Ch. 685, released one year ago today.





	Kage-Tenshi

She didn’t like to admit it, but a small part of her had rejoiced.

To her credit, the rejoicing came after. It came after the immense waves of wrenching surprise, of crushing disbelief, and of tremendous sadness. It came after she infused her bones with the cold, cold acceptance she needed to ensure, personally, that her Captain would rise again, both from his sickbed and from the depths of his sorrow. Naturally, it fell to her to spur her Captain to necessary action, and to assure him that everything would, somehow, be all right - that life, somehow, would go on - that life, somehow,  _should_  go on.

“Soul Society needs you to be strong, Captain,” she’d said. Her words had rung hollow in her own ears.  _What difference,_  she’d wondered bitterly _, can my words make in light of a tragedy like this?_  Still, she’d pressed on, diligent as ever. “ _I_ need you to be strong.”

“Ahhh,” he’d drawled, dropping one heavy eyelid closed and dropping one heavy hand onto her tiny shoulder. “I know. I know, Nanao-chan.” And with that, his thin lips had twitched into something almost like a smile.

 _He’s still thinking of his friend,_ she'd recognized dully, seeing that smile. In truth, she hadn’t been able to blame him. Her Captain’s wounds were still fresh, after all, and fresh wounds, as she had come to learn firsthand in these past few days, were cruel, needy things, always crying for attention and care. Still, she couldn’t help but see her Captain’s smile as inappropriate, as grotesque; it was as if, by replicating the habitual gesture of his friend, her Captain believed that he might finally find it within himself to summon the strength that he needed.

She’d watched him walk away, his steps stiff in his dogmatic determination to keep from staggering, his kimono swishing airily in the gentle wind, and his hairpins glinting brightly in the abrasive sun.

_Captain…_

She had gritted her teeth and clutched, hard, at her shoulder.

_Why can’t I be your strength, Captain?_

These days, she still asks that question. She asks that question when that peculiar, faraway look creeps into her Captain’s grizzled face, and on slow summer evenings, when her Captain strolls, solitary and silent, along the banks of a certain pond. She asks that question on the longest night of dark December, when her Captain sets two places at his table, pours out cup after cup of exquisite sake, and raises toast after toast to the empty air before him. “He’s told me not to,” her Captain once confided, his low, slow words slipping gracefully out upon his hot, alcohol-tinged breath. “He’s told me to save the sake… he never liked it much anyway, y’know…” He’d laughed then, and she, kindly, had opted to ignore the tear budding in the corner of his stormy eye. “But like hell am I gonna listen! Eh, Nanao-chan?”

She visits his grave, sometimes. Sometimes, when both the daylight and her spirits are low, she slips, ghostlike, between the cold stone edifices of the Seireitei and creeps, unseen, to that patch of serene, godly green, and sometimes, she kneels, head bowed and knuckles white, and sometimes, she speaks.

“He still loves you,” she says. “After all this time, and even though you’re worlds apart…”

A breeze catches her dark hair, and her flesh prickles. “What did you do,” she asks, “to earn his love? What did you do to become his strength?” In the shadow of his gravestone, she hugs herself tight. “I’m  _here,”_ she whispers. “I’m here, and you’re not, so why won’t he let me be his strength?”

But, as always, the answer is only silence.

Resigned, she returns to the First Division. She greets her Captain, and he greets her in kind. He does not ask where she has been. His single grey eye is cool, his gaze detached with its usual touch of involuntary scrutiny and subtle inebriation.

She searches, hoping against hope, for what she desires most, but she is unsurprised when she does not find it.

As ever, there's more love in his face when that thundercloud eye turned upon a gravestone than there is when it’s turned upon her.

 

***

 

“…I made your grave in shadow,” Shunsui says. “Selfish? Heh. Well, maybe. But I have yet to hear you complain about it, so…”

In truth, this isn’t the grave he would have chosen for himself. For one thing, the stone is much too big. If he were to be particular, he would say that he might have preferred something near a pond or a stream. If he were to be _very_ particular, he would say that he would have preferred a resting place that permitted him to look up at the sky, rather than one that forced him to gaze at the underside of a gazebo - a lovely gazebo, it should be said, and quite an elegant one at that…

But for all its charms, a gazebo is not the sky.

He misses the sky.

He misses many things. He misses the feeling of a katana in his calloused hands. He misses the taste of sweet _ohagi_ and the fragrant smell of gyokuro green tea. He misses the sensation of worn floorboards beneath tabi-clad feet. He misses the distinctive clang of swordplay, and the muffled blasts of kidō practice, and the frequent bursts of hearty laughter that always echoed through his beloved Thirteenth Division.

Of course, it’s Rukia-chan’s Thirteenth Division now. He still hasn’t quite gotten used to that, even after all these years. He can’t help but think that that’s a little bit funny; how often, after all, has Rukia-chan, clad in her Captain’s haori, knelt before his gravestone, expressing doubts and begging for guidance?

If he could speak to Rukia-chan, he would tell her that she needn’t doubt herself, and that his guidance would be no more useful than her own intuitions.  _You’ve done well, Rukia-chan,_ he would say. He’s proud of Rukia. He would tell her that too, if he could. _I’m proud of you, Rukia-chan,_ he would say. _I’m so, so proud of you._

But he cannot speak to Rukia-chan. He cannot speak to Rukia-chan when she pleads for help, and he cannot speak to Byakuya-kun, who presents his griefs and his joys alike with his signature, stoic silence, and he cannot speak to Nanao-chan when, in rare moments of weakness, she cries to him for answers. He cannot stay Kiyone-chan’s quietly flowing tears, and he cannot bestow words of encouragement upon brave Sentarō-kun.

He can wish. He can dream. He can try his very, very best. He could even scream, could scream at the top of his lungs - lungs which are entirely free from pain, and which will not set him to coughing and gasping and grasping, determined and desperate, for breath. In these long, long years, he reflects, he has even forgotten what blood tastes like…

Not, of course, that that matters. If he screamed, it would be to no avail.

The living only hear silence when he speaks.

The same, he was dismayed to learn when he first began to inhabit this place, is true of the dead. He cannot speak to his dear friends in the Seireitei, and he likewise cannot speak to Kaien, or to Master Genryūsai. He cannot speak to his mother or his father. He has not yet travelled far enough, it seems, for that.

Here, he cannot speak to the living.

Here, he cannot speak to the dead.

But even so, this is where he will stay.

Because here, he can speak to Shunsui.

“I dunno what I’d do if I couldn’t talk to you,” Shunsui says one day. “I… dunno…” He frowns, crestfallen.

“…yes, my friend?”

“I… woulda joined you on the other side, probably…”

_He needs me._

He looks Shunsui squarely in the face, and he shakes his white head.

_If he is to lead… if he is live a full life… if he is to stay alive at all…_

“No, my friend,” he says. “Not yet. You have to promise me - not yet.”

Admittedly, this is not how he imagined death would be. Still, he gives thanks for what he has; whispered words between friends are so, _so_ much more than nothing, after all.

And so, he bides his time, in the shadows of his own grave.

And as often as he can, he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This... is an idea I've had for a little while now, actually.  
> The premise is a little funny, and it might not /actually/ make as much sense as I think it does, but... well, heck. I gave it a try anyway. I... kind of don't want to over-explain it, because I think that takes away from the poetry of the whole thing, so... I'll just point out that the "Nana" part of "Nanao" is spelled using the character for "7," and the "Jūshi" part of "Jūshirō" is spelled using the characters for the number "14." This whole piece is 1400 words exactly (if you go by AO3's word count program, that is), and each half is 700 words exactly. The piece is largely about Shunsui, and how he truly, truly fares in the aftermath of the final arc, but it's largely about Nanao and Ukitake, too. So... make what you will of the numbers, I suppose. I know what they mean to me.  
> Thanks to everyone for reading - and an extra special thanks to everyone who's stuck by my side through the end of Bleach, through fanfic turmoil, through life shenanigans, and through everything in between. You know who you are.  
> Much love to you all :)


End file.
